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- Home
- Departments
- Utilities
- Water Treatment Plant
Water Treatment Plant
The Water Treatment Plant is located in Ector County Texas. All of the water processed at the plant is purchased untreated from the Colorado River Municipal Water District (CRMWD).
Source of Untreated Water
Surface or lake water is received year-round. The majority of the surface water comes from Lake Ivie; however, water can be received from Lake Spence and Lake Thomas. During the warm weather months, groundwater is received from a well field in Ward County.
The surface water receives full treatment including:
- Coagulation
- Flocculation
- Sedimentation
- Filtration
- pH Adjustment
- Disinfection
Chemicals used in the coagulation process include alum (aluminum sulfate) and a polymer. Sodium hydroxide is used to adjust the pH of the water to ensure that it is stable, or non-corrosive. A chloramine disinfectant (a combination of chlorine and ammonia) is used to ensure the bacteriological quality of the water through disinfection. The well water only requires pH adjustment with sodium hydroxide and disinfection with chloramines.
Storage of Treated Water
After treatment, water is stored on-site in covered clear wells until it is pumped into the distribution system. In addition to the water storage facilities at the Plant, there are three overhead water towers located in the water distribution system. These towers not only serve as storage facilities, but also help enhance water pressures in the distribution system.
The Water Treatment Plant is designed to treat 50 million gallons per day (MGD), based on filter capacity. In addition, approximately 20 MGD of well water can be processed. The total amount of water treated annually is approximately 7 billion gallons.
Water Quality Standards
The City of Odessa's water supply is approved by the Texas Commission on Environmental Quality (TCEQ). The water meets all of the Primary Drinking Water Standards established by the TCEQ and the Environmental Protection Agency to protect public health.
The Water Treatment Plant is manned 24 hours per day by TCEQ-licensed operators. In addition to the operational staff, maintenance personnel conduct preventive maintenance as well as the repairs required to ensure water can be processed and pumped into the distribution system continuously.


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For to be sure, he was crucified in weakness, yet he lives by God's power. Likewise, we are weak in him, yet by God's power we will live with him to serve you. —2 Corinthians 13:4
Being vulnerable is not cowardice or being a "wimp." In fact, it is the opposite—it is being a tower of strength. It is what Paul means by becoming a man (1 Cor. 13:11). It is when you are so strong inside that you do not take yourself so seriously. Vulnerability means the ability to be hurt, being unprotected. Our friend Alan Bell says that love is "moving forward without protecting yourself." Becoming vulnerable is therefore the opposite of the sin of self-protection.
Jesus was the strongest man who ever lived. He had the power to stop the entire crucifixion proceedings. He proved that by manifesting only a degree of His power when the chief priests and soldiers came to arrest Him. The Word tells us that when the soldiers surrounded Him in the garden, suddenly dozens (some scholars think it was hundreds) all "fell to the ground" (John 18:6). But Jesus chose to be vulnerable.
Many marriages on the rocks could be healed overnight if both husband and wife would become vulnerable, stop protecting himself or herself, and stop pointing the finger.
Taking myself too seriously grieves the Spirit and robs me of anointing. The issue of "who gets the credit" paralyzes many ministers today—so many want to be noticed and given due recognition.
Many a person forfeits greater usefulness because he or she can't bear the thought of not getting deserved credit for something. Neither can many people tolerate someone else's getting credit for something they did themselves. I can understand this. But it is a wonderful inner release—and glorifying to God—to be utterly self-effacing and to abandon the praise of people. God can trust such a person with a wider ministry.
Excerpted from The Sensitivity of the Spirit (Charisma House, 2002).

subset: commoncrawl


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Technical Features for Plantronics Voyager 4320 UC USB-C w/ Charging Stand Microsoft® Optimized
The Plantronics Voyager 4320 UC is a Stereo Bluetooth Headset that connects to PC via USB-C cable, desk phone via interface cable and smartphone via bluetooth. It offers Poly Acoustic Fence Technology that eliminates any background distraction and creates a virtual voice-free bubble in front of the speaker's mouth, ensuring crystal-clear conversations. Additionally, the SoundGuard Technology limits the level of sound to 102 dBSPL, preventing average daily noise exposure from exceeding 85dBA(Requires Poly Lens Desktop App to enable these features).
The Voyager 4320 UC has an adjustable and comfortable padded headband to promise comfort easy on the ears and easy on the head, too. Hence, it is suitable to keep you engaged during a full day of calls with convenience. Moreover, the Bluetooth headset offers up to 24 hours of talk time to support all-day operations. Additionally, it supports Fast Charging that can give 10 hours of listening time after 15 mins of charge. The battery life can be further extended by using it corded, with audio over USB mode. It has a flexible wireless range of up to 164 feet for uninterrupted operation.
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Jumbo-Sized soda and intricate plots are a dangerous mix. Get relief, and the most out of your movie-going money, with RunPee.com, a site that's like a friend who's seen every flick out there and knows when the bathroom break moments are.
It's a simple idea that's executed well on the web. The left-hand side has links to the current box office leaders and new releases, and clicking on one gives you the various timing points and narrative cues to head to the restrooms if your last stop before the cinema was a bar, coffee shop, or the concession stand. Choose a break point, and the top box explains what will happen right before you've got three minutes to make a run for it.
Want an example? If you're checking out "Star Trek" this weekend, right when Capt. Pike says, "Chekov, you have the con," you've got about three minutes of exposition ahead that you can probably pick up on later. If you don't mind spoilers, or you're attending your second showing, click the unscrambling button below the first cue to find out exactly what will be happening while you're away.
Find us a site that helps you get back to your exact seat during dark and quiet moments, and we'll suggest the ultimate movie site merger. In the meantime, RunPee.com is the second friend you can consult before picking a flick.


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Normally, it would need to fit a couple of tennis rackets. Perhaps a change of clothing. Maybe a banana.
But all functionality flew out the window at this week's Family Circle Cup. Take a look at what Venus and Serena brought off the court.
What to make of this Har-Tru trend? Are these women getting valet service for their gym bags? If so, it was clearly a perk not provided for everyone; even Charleston darling Patty Schnyder had to schlep her own bags to the locker room.
>> the cyan-tists
>> best of davis cup fashion (quarterfinal ties)
>> davis cup fashion: learn from the germans
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They're generally used to propel construction, agriculture, and forestry equipment.
Conventional planetary drives usually come in either two or three-stage configurations. Two-stage drives have reduction ratios from about 16:1 to 60:1 and typical three-stage ratios range from 60:1 to 350:1.
The GFT 45 T2/T3 from Bosch Rexroth, Lake Zurich, Ill. (boschrexroth-us.com), combines a two and three-stage planetary drive in one compact package. The dual-ratio unit functions as a two-stage drive for low-ratio (high-speed) operation and the third stage engages for high-ratio ( lowspeed) movements. It generates maximum intermittent torque of 45,000 N-m (33,188 lb-ft) and maximum output speed is approximately 100 rpm. According to Bosch Rexroth engineers, the dual-ratio design holds four major advantages:
- Wide operating speed range.
- Two different reduction ratios in a housing about the same size as a single reduction ratio drive.
- The ability to shiftonthe-fly between reduction ratios.
- It operates at high speeds without external cooling.
The GFT 45 generates a high ratio through an input stage that disengages when the vehicle requires low-ratio output. The high ratio is approximately four times that of the low ratio. The planetary input stage is inside the supporting axle — not in the gearbox cover as is normally the case with three-stage driving gears. This arrangement lets the stage engage as needed. Input is on the sun wheel, and the output on the planet carrier.
Two spring-applied, hydraulically released clutch packs engage and disengage the input stage. One clutch connects the freely rotating ring gear to the supporting axle, the other connects the sun wheel shaft and planet carrier.
Each clutch pack has a hydraulic release port. This gives four possible combinations for clutch position and operating mode:
- When the vehicle is stationary and no hydraulic pressure on the clutches, spring force engages both clutch packs. This blocks the input stage and brakes the wheel hub via the gearbox. Thus it serves as a static emergency/parking brake.
- If pressure is applied to both clutch packs, the drive is in the free-wheel condition and the gearbox is idling.
- With pressure routed to the inner clutch pack and none to the outer one, the drive operates in the high-ratio, lowspeed mode. This disengages the clutch between the sun wheel and planet stage. The ring gear remains connected to the supporting axle, fixed to the housing, and the planet input stage reduces engine speed by roughly a 4:1 ratio.
- If pressure is routed to the outer clutch pack and none to the inner clutch pack, the drive operates in the low-ratio, high-speed mode. The clutch between-the ring gear and housingdisengages, and the clutch between the sun-wheel input and planet carrier engages. The outer clutch pack releases and lets the input-stage ring gear rotate, while the inner clutch pack secures the input shaft to the ring gear.
The nonpositive action of the clutches means the gear can be changed in motion and under load. The planetary drive's wide operating speed range is further enhanced when used with a variable-displacement hydraulic motor.


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ESPN's Highest-Rated and Most-Viewed Season of Monday Night Football
Most-Watched Series on Cable and 15 Biggest Cable Household Audiences of 2009;
ESPN.com Averages 84.6 Million Page Views on Mon./Tues., Up 24% From 2008
Vikings-Bears MNF Finale Wins the Night, Nets 12.0 Rating and 17 Million Viewers
The 40th season of Monday Night Football was the highest-rated and most-viewed season since ESPN assumed sports television's signature series in 2006 (four seasons). MNF was once again the most-watched series on cable television in 2009, set an all-time cable viewership record for the fourth straight year and drew the year's 15 biggest cable household audiences (and top 14 among viewers). For the first time, ESPN's MNF averaged higher than a 10 rating and 14 million viewers for the season. Monday Night Football ranks No. 10 among all regularly scheduled television programs this season.
In four seasons on ESPN, Monday Night Football has registered eight of the top 10 all-time biggest household audiences in cable history, led by this year's Packers-Vikings telecast October 5, which attracted cable's largest audience ever in both households (15,136,000 homes) and viewers (21,839,000), as well as the highest rating (15.3) in ESPN's 30-year history.
ESPN's 17 Monday Night Football telecasts in 2009 averaged a 10.4 rating, representing an average of 10,315,000 households (14,382,000 viewers – P2+), increases of 17%, 19% and 20%, respectively, vs. 2008 (8.9; 8,679,000 and 11,962,000).
MNF ended on a particularly strong note with last night's game – the Chicago Bears' 36-30 dramatic upset in overtime over the Minnesota Vikings — delivering a 12.0 rating, representing an average of 11,899,000 households (17,006,000 viewers – P2+). The game ranks as the fifth largest household audience of all-time (No. 6 among viewers). MNF led all the night's programs (broadcast or cable) among households, viewers and all key male and adult demos, making ESPN the top network for the night in all categories. It was the sixth time MNF won the night for total viewers among all networks this season.
"The 40th season of Monday Night Football was an overwhelming success with competitive games, record-setting ratings and a resoundingly positive reaction from fans about our presentation," said George Bodenheimer, president, ESPN and ABC Sports. "It is a credit to the hundreds of people who work on the show week after week to ensure that the NFL's most storied television franchise continues to set the bar for sports on television while also ranking among the most-watched programs of the year."
MNF on TV
MNF occupies eight of the top 10 spots on the list of cable's biggest audiences ever among both households (excludes breaking news), and two games this season each averaged more than 21 million viewers – Green Bay Packers at Minnesota Vikings game (Oct. 5) with an average of 21,839,000 total viewers (15,136,000 households, based on a 15.3 rating), and New England Patriots at New Orleans Saints (Nov. 30) with an average of 21,402,000 viewers (14,872,000 households, based on a 15.0 rating).
Other highlights for the 2009 NFL season:
- ESPN's MNF games account for the 15 biggest household audiences for any cable television program in 2009.
- ESPN led all networks – cable or broadcast – in delivery of men 18-34 and men 18-49 every Monday in primetime this season; ESPN was also No. 1 in men 25-54 in 15 of 16 weeks and No. 1 among people 18-49 in 13 weeks.
- Six times, ESPN won the night as the most-watched network among households and viewers – cable or broadcast – in primetime on Monday.
- For the past 11 consecutive weeks, ESPN has led all cable networks in delivery of adult men on a total-day basis, as well as men 18-54. ESPN has been #1 among M18+ and M18-54 for 14 of the past 15 weeks.
- Monday Night Countdown, ESPN's 90-minute weekly MNF pre-game show, finished with an average 2.4 rating and 2,345,000 households (3,006,000 viewers), representing increases of 20% and 19%, respectively. This ranks as Countdown's highest-rated and most-viewed season ever.
- ESPN Deportes' Spanish-language coverage of Monday Night Football also delivered its highest-rated and most-viewed NFL season ever with an average 0.9 Hispanic rating, 45,000 Hispanic households, and 62,000 Hispanic viewers, increases of 80%, 150% and 107%, respectively, from 2008.
For the season, NFL content on ESPN.com, including "Monday Night HQ," accessed via computers and mobile devices sparked a 24% increase in traffic on Mondays (through Tuesdays at noon ET) with an average 84.6 million page views per week. Additionally, ESPN.com streamed an average 2.8 million NFL related videos per week – an increase of 7% over 2008.
ESPN Monday Night Football Season Averages (2006-09)
Year Rating HHs (000s) Viewers (000s)
2009 10.4 10.315 14.382
2008 8.9 8.679 11.962
2007 8.6 8.277 11.230
2006 9.9 9.109 12.325
Most-Viewed Monday Night Football Games on ESPN (2006 – Present)
Rank Date Teams Viewers (000s) HHs (000s)
1 10/05/2009 Green Bay Packers-Minnesota Vikings 21,839 15,136
2 11/30/2009 New England Patriots-New Orleans Saints 21,402 14,872
3 09/15/2008 Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys 18,608 12,953
4 12/03/2007 New England Patriots-Baltimore Ravens 17,522 12,529
5 12/28/2009 Minnesota Vikings-Chicago Bears 17,006 11,899
6 10/23/2006 New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys 16,028 11,807
7 11/09/2009 Pittsburgh Steelers-Denver Broncos 16,002 11,358
8 09/28/2009 Carolina Panthers-Dallas Cowboys 15,705 11,354
9 09/25/2006 Atlanta Falcons-New Orleans Saints 14,999 10,850
10 09/21/2009 Indianapolis Colts-Miami Dolphins 14,710 10,849
Top 10 Most-Viewed Programs in Cable Television History (Households):
Rank Date Teams Network HHs (000s)
1 10/05/2009 Green Bay Packers-Minnesota Vikings ESPN 15,136
2 11/30/2009 New England Patriots-New Orleans Saints ESPN 14,872
3 09/15/2008 Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys ESPN 12,953
4 12/03/2007 New England Patriots-Baltimore Ravens ESPN 12,529
5 12/28/2009 Minnesota Vikings-Chicago Bears ESPN 11,899
6 10/23/2006 New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys ESPN 11,807
7 11/09/2009 Pittsburgh Steelers-Denver Broncos ESPN 11,358
8 09/28/2009 Carolina Panthers-Dallas Cowboys ESPN 11,354
9 11/09/1993 Larry King (NAFTA Debate) CNN 11,174
10 10/02/2008 Vice Presidential Debate – Palin vs. Biden FOX NEWS 11,098
Top 10 Most-Viewed Programs in Cable Television History (Viewers):
Rank Date Teams Network Viewers (000s)
1 10/05/2009 Green Bay Packers-Minnesota Vikings ESPN 21.839
2 11/30/2009 New England Patriots-New Orleans Saints ESPN 21,402
3 09/15/2008 Philadelphia Eagles-Dallas Cowboys ESPN 18,608
4 12/03/2007 New England Patriots-Baltimore Ravens ESPN 17,522
5 08/17/2007 High School Musical 2 Disney Channel 17,241
6 12/28/2009 Minnesota Vikings-Chicago Bears ESPN 17,006
7 11/09/1993 Larry King – NAFTA Debate CNN 16,837
8 12/25/1994 Detroit Lions-Miami Dolphins ESPN 16,063
9 10/23/2006 New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys ESPN 16,028
10 11/09/2009 Pittsburgh Steelers-Denver Broncos ESPN 16,002
Note: excluding breaking news; live + same day
Bold indicates 2009 MNF games
MNF Team to Call 2010 NFL Pro Bowl
ESPN's Monday Night Football team of Mike Tirico, Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski will return to the booth to call the 2010 NFL Pro Bowl at Dolphin Stadium in South Florida when the matchup of NFC vs. AFC stars kicks off Super Bowl week. The Pro Bowl will be televised Sunday, January 31, 2010 on ESPN and ESPN HD at 7:20 p.m. ET.


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Sadly, he is no longer alive. He passed away in 1987, when I was a freshman in college. It was a painful ending of his life. I have written about this. As has my brother Michael. As have some other people here and there. If you want to know more about that, well, here are some links to read.
- A day to think, to pause, to ponder. Posted by me February 7, 2013.
- My quest to free my father's publications
- David Dobbs in Wired Free Science, One Paper at a Time
- David Dobbs follow up "Jonathan Eisen frees (almost all) his father's papers."
- My page about this
- Mother Jones article about my brother Michael Eisen with a discussion of our father.
- My brother's post from February 8, 2013: My father, Aaron Swartz, and assigning blame for suicide
- My brother on scientific witchhunts: Yoshiki Sasai and the deadly consequences of science misconduct witchhunts
But that is not what I want to write about today. The pain of his suicide will be with me forever I am sure. But I want to focus on his life. And that I know remarkably little about. So it was with great interest that a few years ago his sister Arleen came to visit us in California. And as part of this visit she gave me my father's Bar Mitzvah Book.
I glanced at it and then it sat in a box for a while. I have never been religious and did not have a Bar Mitzvah myself. So it seemed foreign to me.
But then, when Arleen passed away relatively suddenly, I felt really disconnected form my father's history. And so one day I opened the book and leafed through it more carefully. And I became a bit obsessed with it. The book had dozens of pictures from the event. And cards and telegrams congratulating my father. And all sorts of notes and notations of various kinds. I barely recognized any of the people. Of course, this was from 1955 so that is not that surprising. But part of this is that I have never been that close to my father's family. I always got along with them, but just never saw them that often before my father died and even less afterwards. So the key to me was - how could I figure out just what was in the book. And more importantly to me, could I figure out who was at this event. This was one of the only tangible things I had to hold about my father's childhood. I did not know too many stories. I did not have many artifacts of any kind. And here was this major major event. And I literally had the book about it.
So today I am here to tell you, I have digs into this book. And stunningly, it not only told me about one event, it told me about my family. A lot. It did this because I was able to figure out who most of the people were at the Bar Mitzvah - and most of them were family. In addition, I have used some family tree databases such as Ancestry and My Heritage to track down information about these people and have been able to use this one book to basically figure out, I think quite accurately, many generations of my father's family tree.
I am going to have to tell this story in many parts. It is long. And complicated. But it all started with one book.
The first page of the book had a picture of my dad and a little card
And the rest of the book was filled with notes, pictures, and cards. And a lot of it was very unfamiliar. The pictures were what really got to me since I recognized so few of the people in them. Here are the pics.
But fortunately there was other information in the book. Some of it was all the congratulation cards and telegrams he and his family received. See for example these
But it was other details about the Bar Mitzvah itself that ended up being the most interesting and useful to me. For example, my grandmother even kept all the details on planning the food
And also included in the book was information on the ceremony - the order of events and who did what. This was helpful since these actually listed some names of people I knew very little about.
But fortunately there was other information in the book. Some of it was all the congratulation cards and telegrams he and his family received. See for example these
But it was other details about the Bar Mitzvah itself that ended up being the most interesting and useful to me. For example, my grandmother even kept all the details on planning the food
My grandmother also included many of the key details of the event - the invitation, the save the date card, and other such materials
And also included in the book was information on the ceremony - the order of events and who did what. This was helpful since these actually listed some names of people I knew very little about.
But the absolute most important parts to me were two types of items. One of them was all the information about the tables - who sat where. This would turn out to be very important (more on this another time). But see the details below:
And the children ...
And then. The key to it all. Underneath another item. Four pieces of paper. Four pieces that served as the key to unlocking the secrets of my father's family. My grandmother kept, and included in the book, the list of invitees including ALL sorts of details about them that would serve to be critical - though it took a little bit of time to figure out what all of this meant. Here are those pages
These yellowed fragile pieces of paper were just incredible. It took me months to figure out all of what they had to reveal. But now I have. I have managed to use these sheets of paper and some other information in this book, in conjunction with searches of old records and various family tree websites, to figure out basically who all the people at the Bar Mitzvah were and also figure out who all of my father's aunt's uncles, cousins, great aunts and uncles and others were and thus infer a huge swath of my family tree.
So in honor of my father on his 75th birthday I am posting this. His Bar Mitzvah book, put together I am sure by his mother, kept by his mother, and passed on to me, is a time capsule looking not just 62 years into the past but even further, into the 1800s where I have found records of my father's family in Eastern Europe only because I had the information in this book.
Now I am sure there would have been other ways to find this information out. I could have contacted my father's remaining relatives. I actually tried to do this a bit but I just did not get much information and I confess I was not very persistent. Somehow, searching and searching and searching to understand what was in this book, and digging into all sorts of online records, was cathartic. And I hope, it will also be interesting to some out there as I tell this story of what this book revealed.


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A decision by Bradford Water and Sewer Commission officials to stop fluoridating the public water supply — after doing so for more than three decades — has prompted strong opposition from an Upper Valley dentist who wonders why the five-member water board did not seek medical advice before making that move.
Chairman Robert Nutting, who has been on the utility panel for 39 years, acknowledged this week that commissioners "did not talk to the dentists about it" before stopping fluoridation in April.
Residents and businesses on the Bradford water system only learned of the decision early this month when a small yellow slip, dated Nov. 2, arrived with their water bills.
"Effective immediately, the Water and Sewer Commission has voted to discontinue putting fluoride into the municipal water system," it said.
Bradford dentist Bob Munson said this week the board should have discussed the matter with area dentists before discontinuing fluoridation, which helps prevent tooth decay.
"These five people are responsible for maintaining a safe and healthy water system, and they don't ask anyone about this? They should have let us know what they were doing," he said.
Now a meeting has been scheduled. Munson and others will have an opportunity to talk with the commissioners on Tuesday, Nov. 27, at 6 p.m. at the Bradford Academy building, according to Bridget Simmons, the commission's office manager.
Nutting said the board stopped fluoridation largely as a practical matter in the spring when replacement of one of the system's two pump houses necessitated a shutdown of the pump that added the fluoride .
The panel formally voted 4-0 on Oct. 9 to make the no-fluoride policy permanent. Commissioner Lunnie Lang was absent, according to Simmons.
" They're upset because we didn't go to them in the first place," Nutting said of the dentists.
The fluoridation of public water supplies has, at times, been a controversial issue in different parts of the country, and the practice has its critics who claim some studies show that fluoride may have harmful effects on health.
Nutting said Bradford water officials "had some information" that fluoride poses a health risk.
"People look at it both ways; fluoride is either bad or good," he said.
But Munson, a second-generation Bradford dentist, questioned the source of that information. He said the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is solidly in favor of fluoridation, which he said is widely recognized by public health officials as a beneficial practice which has the support of most dentists, nationwide.
"Fluoride is effective, even in utero. It makes a tooth so much harder; it's a huge benefit," he said.
A fluoridation "overview" on the CDC's website states: "For 65 years, community water fluoridation has been a safe and healthy way to effectively prevent tooth decay. CDC has recognized water fluoridation as one of 10 great public health achievements of the 20th century."
A similar endorsement is posted on the American Dental Association's website: "The ADA has endorsed fluoridation of community water supplies as safe and effective for preventing tooth decay for more than 40 years."
Simmons said yesterday the information provided to the commission came from Gregory Stone, an anti-fluoridation activist from out of the area who did not attend any commission meetings.
She said the primary reason the board discontinued fluoridation was financial. The new pump house was not designed to accommodate the adding of fluoride, and it would have cost money to change the structure.
"That's the main reason; it wasn't built to have fluoride there," she said.
The Selectboard was not involved in the decision, according to that panel's chairman, Ted Unkles. He said Wednesday the commissioners have the authority to rule independently on water issues.
Retired Bradford dentist Jim Barton, father of dentist Charlie Barton who now has a practice in town, initiated the drive for water fluoridation decades ago.
Bradford has just completed a large municipal project that extended water and sewer lines from the village south along Route 5 to the Lower Plain.
The system now includes two 500-gallon water storage tanks and accommodates some 600 "hookups" to users. Nutting estimated the system provides water to between 1,500 and 2,000 people, including at the 600-student Oxbow High School and 300-student Bradford Elementary School.
This story has been amended to correct an earlier error. The following clarification ran in the Sunday, Nov. 18 edition of the Valley News:
A Bradford Water and Sewer Commission meeting to discuss flouridation in Bradford's water supply will take place Nov. 27 at 6 p.m. at the Bradford Academy building. A story in Friday's Valley News was not clear on the date of that meeting.


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When the history of Facebook-enabled activism is written, the backlash against the Susan G. Komen foundation's decision to end grants to Planned Parenthood clinics will fall somewhere behind the Arab Spring and ahead of the effort to get Betty White to host Saturday Night Live. The Betty White campaign took months; the Komen foundation reversed its stand after just four days of scathing Facebook updates.
This is what social-media anger looks like: a pink graphic with the words "Still Standing with Planned Parenthood" and an arrow pointing to the user's photo, posted with the righteous force of a click.
(MORE: Planned Parenthood Credits Social Media for Publicizing Its Position Against Komen Foundation)
By the end of last week, Komen had decided that Planned Parenthood could apply for future grants to provide breast-cancer detection and education. But having raised in a matter of days five times the $600,000 that it stood to lose in grant funds, Planned Parenthood isn't going to need Komen's money anytime soon.
The backlash against Komen, and its subsequent reversal, wasn't a given. While the Komen episode generated an immediate response by Planned Parenthood's supporters, legislative attacks against the organization last year resulted in barely a social-media peep. When a dozen states proposed banning all funding to the abortion-and-health-care provider — and those bans became law in at least five states — no one started a Twitter campaign to lobby state legislatures. And when a congressional effort to strip Planned Parenthood of federal funds nearly shut down the government, the Facebook group Don't Let Congress Defund Planned Parenthood attracted a whopping 30 Likes.
Why did Komen's decision galvanize pro–abortion rights Americans while much more substantial efforts to financially starve Planned Parenthood failed to register? The most obvious answer is that breast cancer is a far less polarizing issue than abortion, or even birth control. Support for abortion rights doesn't generate the energy it once did in the U.S. because the women who came of age around the time of the Roe v. Wade decision are past their childbearing years and the women who are now in their reproductive prime have never known a world in which abortion was illegal. In the case of breast cancer, however, those early abortion-rights activists now include many breast-cancer survivors — and friends of those who have died from breast cancer. And many of the younger women have watched their mothers and aunts fight the disease.
(MORE: Planned Parenthood Responds to Komen Reversal)
MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell, who announced last September that she had been diagnosed with breast cancer, was the first journalist to interview Komen founder Nancy Brinker, and Mitchell introduced the segment by noting that she was "expressing the anger of a lot of people," including herself. As Mitchell later told Politico, "It's hard to explain when you've lost someone to breast cancer and then run with that person's name on your T-shirt, how determined you are, holding back your tears." Mitchell has been involved with Komen for years and said she remembered "as a very young woman running, having just lost my closest friend, and knowing that I was running that race for her. It kept me going."
However, the reaction went beyond the instinct to protect more women from breast cancer. The outpouring of support for Planned Parenthood was not as visceral as the anger at the Komen foundation. For those who have donated to the group and participated in Race for the Cure and worn pink ribbons or purchased pink-colored anything through Komen's many sponsors, the decision to revoke grants to Planned Parenthood felt like a betrayal.
Perhaps the closest comparison is when lovers of Chick-fil-A's fried-chicken sandwiches discovered that the restaurant chain had donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to groups that oppose gay marriage. As one Komen sponsor told the Washington Post, "It's unsettling to think you're supporting one thing and then it changes." Komen supporters thought they had woken up to find that their beloved pink-ribbon standard-bearer had become a conservative antiabortion institution.
The episode also made explicit an argument Planned Parenthood has consistently marshaled as it fought state and federal efforts to deny the organization access to funding for birth control. Its clinics, Planned Parenthood insists, provide women with care that goes beyond reproductive health. The headlines announcing that Planned Parenthood was losing grants from the Komen foundation legitimized Planned Parenthood's role as a health care provider for low-income women.
(MORE: How Will Komen's Split with Planned Parenthood Affect Women's Health?)
Conservatives quickly recognized this threat to their efforts to paint Planned Parenthood as "an abortion factory," and they jumped to point out that most Planned Parenthood clinics don't provide mammograms on-site and instead refer women to outside clinics. In a statement released after Komen backed off its initial decision, Ralph Reed of the conservative Faith and Freedom Coalition charged that "Planned Parenthood put politics ahead of women's health" and alleged that it "does not offer mammography services to women."
Planned Parenthood clinics are hardly the only Komen grant recipients to serve as a middle (wo)man, offering manual breast exams by nurse practitioners, and then subsidizing the mammograms of women whom they send elsewhere for the procedure. And it takes some contortions to argue that the end result — free or highly subsidized breast-cancer detection for women who otherwise might not receive it — does not benefit women's health.
Now that Komen has reversed its position and vowed to continue considering Planned Parenthood clinics for grants, antiabortion activists are crying foul about Planned Parenthood's "bullying" of Komen. Likewise, Planned Parenthood did not hesitate to label Komen's initial decision the result of pressure from antiabortion groups, despite a lack of evidence for that charge. Both sides in the culture war used the episode to raise funds for their causes and to demonize their opponents. But ultimately this showdown didn't tell us anything about the culture war or abortion. It proved instead that women will rally to the cause of fighting breast cancer. Because there's still no cure.
PHOTOS: A Photographer's Intimate Account of Her Mother's Cancer Ordeal
MORE: Why the Rate of Repeat Breast-Cancer Surgery Varies So Widely


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ForumsTips & TricksSimple, lightweight desktop client for Windows...
Simple, lightweight desktop client for Windows...
Author | Message |
Tim Skoch |
I'm a recent convert to ToodleDo (my brother showed it to me). When I started using ToodleDo, I wanted a VERY lightweight client which simply (1) showed me my tasks, (2) didn't get in my way, and (3) was readily accessible when I needed it (without having to open up a new IE window, navigate, sign in, etc...). The program I wound up writing is available here for anyone to use:
http://timskoch.com/toodleDoWidget/ Feel free to use it. The source code is also available there for anyone who wants to use it. Note that this isn't really meant to be fully-featured software - it was just a quick fix to suit my needs. Feel free to modify/redistribute/whatever. A few notes: -When you run it, a window will appear, but no icon will appear in your taskbar. -An icon WILL appear in the notification area. -You can move the window by dragging the dark-grey bar at the top of the window. -A right-click on either (1) the notification-area icon or (2) the dark-grey bar on the top will bring up a context menu. -The only way to properly exit the app is through the context menu. -A single left-click on the notification-area icon will bring the window to the front. -Within the context menu, you can toggle between ToodleDo's slim and regular versions. -Requires .NET framework to be installed. If people are interested in using this, but would like a more robust program first, let me know, and I'd be delighted to flesh it out a little and repost it - I just don't want to go through the effort if nobody is interested. I make no guarantees about which platforms it runs on, but it SHOULD be fine on anything running the latest version of .NET. I've only tested it on my Vista Enterprise machine (because that's the only place I intend to use it). BTW: The program merely wraps ToodleDo's webpage in a small window, so what you are seeing in the window is simply ToodleDo's website. Any changes to ToodleDo's URL's may break the program (but it would be easily fixable); This message was edited Mar 24, 2009. |
Sytone |
Very simlar to my solution, i created a WPF app with a webbrowser object in it pointing to the site :D
I wanted to remove the distraction of tabbed browsing and the web in general and only hve this site with a Home and Back button. Ill fix it up a bit and post it as well. |
Anders |
Posted by Tim Skoch:
I'm a recent convert to ToodleDo (my brother showed it to me). When I started using ToodleDo, I wanted a VERY lightweight client which simply (1) showed me my tasks, (2) didn't get in my way, and (3) was readily accessible when I needed it (without having to open up a new IE window, navigate, sign in, etc...). The program I wound up writing is available here for anyone to use: http://timskoch.com/toodleDoWidget/ Very cool. Thanks a lot for making this available. If you decide to do more work on it, I think it would be great if the window was resizable, and could be pinned on top of other windows. Other than that, all it needs is offline access, but I suppose that is far more complicated. Edit: By the way, I am using a very different machine (MSI Wind), and it works fine. This message was edited Mar 24, 2009. |
Sytone |
Have uploaded my version to my site:
http://www.sytone.com/2009/03/25/toodledo-distraction-free/ |
Anders |
Posted by Sytone:
I like the one posted by Tim, but I thought I'd try the one you posted as well. I can't get it to run. I just get the "Toodledo Distraction Free has encountered a problem and needs to close" message when I try to open it. I believe I have the latest .net installed, but perhaps it is just my computer. Let me know if I am doing anything wrong. I just downloaded it to my desktop and double clicked on it, then confirmed that I wanted to run the executable file. Thanks for posting it anyway, even if it doesn't work for me. |
toodledotest |
I have not tried it on XP but it should be fine on Vista 32/64bit with .Net 3.5 SP1. Ill get my parents to try it out as they have XP still :) |
Sytone |
Whoops wrong account... Oh well you know my test account now :)
slamp |
Works well on XP (32bits SP3).
Anders |
I have XP SP3, but I only have .net framework 2.0 installed. I don't really understand the whole .net framework thing, and my old computer has an incredible amount of hard drive space dedicated to various installations. I am assuming that since they do not automatically replace previous versions, you cannot just delete an old version when you install a new one. I am not looking to weigh this computer down too much so I would appreciate some clarification on this subject if anyone can offer it.
Sytone |
The .Net framework provides additional capability for developers to build solutions for the world. Im my case I am using Windows Presentation Foundation to build my application and in particular some fuctionality in 3.5 SP1 of the framework. The famework versions build upon each other and can run along side each other. so you will have no issues installing 3.5 as well as 2.0. In some cases applications which are still designed for 2.0 will not use the 3.5 functionality (and 3.5 is built heavily on 2.0 but I will not go down that twisted discussion) so you will need 2.0 on the system. The framework is only loaded when a aplication calls it so there is no perceiable background load on the system, just extra files on the harddrive. |
Sytone |
Also... I have updated the binary on my site and you can min/max the window by double clicking on the top and there is now a hide link which will minimise the window.
Feel free to add any sugestions. |
Anders |
Okay so either .net 3.5 or TD-DF just totally broke my internet. I am putting my money on the .net, but I can't find any mention of similar problems on their support site. Please let me know if the Distraction Free app changes any connections settings that may have contributed to this problem.
Thanks. |
Sytone |
Nope, and I would be supprised if the framework broke your connection. I have installed it on many machines without hassle.
Anders |
That's what I figured. I have just tried a couple of system restores to no avail. I hope MS support who I emailed earlier can provide some assistance because for now I'm stuck.
By the way, looked like a cool application while I had the chance to use it. I have some suggestions, etc. that I will post later, but I have more pressing, frustrating issues to deal with right now. Keep getting "connection to server reset" in both FF & IE. Makes me want a Mac. |
Proximo |
I did the same thing with no programming involved. Read my post on it. Works for anyone using Firefox. If you don't use Firefox.... What are you waiting for? It's the best. lol
https://www.toodledo.com/forums/3/1664/0/toodledo-slim-application.html |
gui |
I agree. Great way to work without distractions and you don't mes with your PC. Use Firefox
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Managed Accounts in Europe
Today, we're thrilled to launch Managed Accounts for Stripe Connect to marketplaces based in the U.K., Ireland, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Norway.
Connect powers thousands of marketplaces around the world—companies like Kickstarter, Lyft, Shopify, and Deliveroo that are transforming the way we buy and sell today. With Managed Accounts, marketplaces like these can fully customize the experience for sellers or contractors that provide the services on their platform.
Using Managed Accounts, multi-sided marketplaces in Europe can now design lightweight setup flows, configure payment schedules, decide who pays fees, determine when information is collected, and more. Stripe gets out of the way so your sellers never have to leave your platform.
Since the launch of Managed Accounts in the U.S. and Canada last year, we've already helped millions of sellers get paid. We've worked over the past year to ensure that the experience of building, running, and scaling your marketplace is as easy as possible no matter where your business is based:
- Just like U.S. and Canadian platforms, marketplaces in Europe can now spin up Managed Accounts for sellers or contractors in any of the 25 countries that Stripe supports today without having to register a local business entity or establishing banking relationships in each region—a process that can take many months and reams of paperwork. In other words, you can instantly expand your business internationally to new countries without having to build payments infrastructure to meet local requirements.
- You're also no longer required to acquire licenses or decipher per-country compliance intricacies by yourself. Stripe will help you verify seller identities (to comply with know-your-customer laws and prevent fraud), collect and verify your sellers' banking information, track seller earnings, help sellers get paid on the right schedule (and in their preferred currency), help handle tax reporting requirements, and more.
Modern marketplaces are building more than just simple apps; they provide an end-to-end experience for both consumers as well as the drivers, restaurants, sellers, or contractors on their platform. We're excited to see the experiences entrepreneurs in the U.K., Ireland, and the Nordics will build with Managed Accounts and how they'll use Connect to scale internationally not only in Europe, but around the world.
If you'd like to learn more about how to integrate, we've put together a guide to get started. We're also constantly adding improvements and support for more countries to Connect, so if you have questions or feedback, please drop us a line!


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CAIRO – Libyan rebels appear to have "summarily executed" scores of fighters loyal to Moammar Gadhafi, and probably the dictator himself, when they overran his hometown a year ago, a human rights group said Wednesday.
The report by Human Rights Watch on alleged rebel abuses that followed the October 2011 capture of the city of Sirte in the final major battle of the eight-month civil war is one of the most detailed descriptions of what the group says were war crimes committed by the militias that toppled Gadhafi, and which still play a major role in Libyan politics today.
The 50-page report, titled "Death of a Dictator: Bloody Vengeance in Sirte," details the last hours of Gadhafi's life on Oct. 20, 2011, when he tried to flee the besieged city. The longtime leader's convoy was struck by NATO aircraft as it tried to escape and the survivors were attacked by militias from the city of Misrata, who captured and disarmed the dictator and his entourage.
Misrata was subjected to a brutal weeks-long siege by Gadhafi's forces that killed hundreds of residents, and fighters from the city became among the regime's most implacable foes. HRW says it seems the Misratans took revenge against their prisoners in Sirte.
"The evidence suggests that opposition militias summarily executed at least 66 captured members of Gadhafi's convoy in Sirte," said Peter Bouckaert, emergencies director at Human Rights Watch.
The New York-based group's report says that new evidence unearthed in its investigation includes a mobile phone video clip taken by militiamen showing a large number of prisoners from Gadhafi's convoy being cursed and abused by opposition fighters.
The remains of least 17 of the detainees in the phone video were later identified in a group of 66 bodies found at Sirte's Mahari hotel, some still with their hands tied behind their back. Human Rights Watch said it used hospital morgue photos to confirm the victims' identities.
The dictator himself was seen alive in a widely-circulated video made public shortly after the battle.
"Video footage shows that Moammar Gadhafi was captured alive but bleeding heavily from a head wound," the HRW report says. But footage showed that he was "severely beaten by opposition forces, stabbed with bayonet in his buttocks, causing more injuries, and bleeding. By the time he is filmed being loaded into an ambulance half-naked, he appears lifeless."
Bouckaert said the group's "findings call into question the assertion by Libyan authorities that Moammar Gadhafi was killed in crossfire and not after his capture."
Gadhafi's son Muatassim was also videotaped alive and in captivity, only to have his body turn up at a morgue in Misrata alongside his father's.
"In case after case we investigated, the individuals had been videotaped alive by the opposition fighters who held them and then found dead hours later," Bouckaert said. "Our strongest evidence for these executions comes from the footage filmed by the opposition forces and the physical evidence at the Mahari hotel where the 66 bodies were found."
Another victim cited by HRW as an example was 29-year-old Ahmed al-Gharyani, a navy recruit from the town of Tawergha. He was seen alive in the phone video as rebels beat him. His body was later found in the hotel and eventually identified by his family.
His hometown, Tawergha, was used as a staging ground by Gadhafi's forces to launch attacks on Misrata, but after rebels broke the siege on Misrata and overran Tawergha, the town's residents fled or were driven out by vengeful rebels.
Suleiman al-Fortia, a member of the dissolved National Transitional Council from Misrata, denied that Gadhafi or his loyalists were executed. "We hoped to arrest Gadhafi alive (to try him). All the killings took place in a crossfire," he said.
But HRW said that "under the laws of war, the killing of captured combatants is a war crime, and Libyan civilian and military authorities have an obligation to investigate war crimes and other violations of international humanitarian law."
The group released its report days before Libya celebrates "liberation day," the anniversary of Sirte's fall on Oct. 23. Since then, the country's new leaders have heavily depended on former rebel militias to secure cities and protect borders in the absence of a strong national army or other government security forces.
Simmering feuds between rival militias and towns continued to challenge the government's hold on the sprawling country.
A militia affiliated with the Defense Ministry shelled on Wednesday the western town of Bani Walid, one of the few remaining strongholds of Gadhafi loyalists.
The town had been allowed to co-exist uneasily with the new government after Gadhafi's fall but the pro-government Libya Shield militia placed it under renewed siege after residents were reported to have tortured and killed one of the rebels who caught the former dictator in Sirte.
Talks to disarm its fighters and hand over the suspects failed. Witnesses and medical officials said at least two people from the town were killed in the shelling, and 18 Libya Shield members were wounded.
Mahmoud al-Mabrouk, a resident of Bani Walid reached by telephone, said Libya Shield fighters have advanced into his district and were now only a few kilometers (miles) from the city center. He said he saw at least two people die near his house, as heavy shelling with mortars and artillery continued into the early evening.
A doctor in the hospital treating the Libya Shield fighters said 18 of them were wounded in the fighting, including two in critical condition. He spoke anonymously as he was not authorized to talk to the media.
Other militias have been implicated in revenge attacks and communal strife, while members of one Islamist militia have been accused of taking part in the attack on the U.S. Consulate in the eastern city Benghazi on Sept. 11 that killed four Americans, including U.S. Ambassador to Libya Chris Stevens.
In the aftermath of Stevens' death, popular resentment surged and thousands took to the streets of Benghazi demanding the dismantlement of the militias. The government has taken over some militia headquarters and appointed military officers to run the groups, and designated some "outlawed" and others "tolerated."
State Department spokeswoman Victoria Nuland said the U.S. is urging Libya to genuinely investigate all claims of war crimes in last year's civil war and to prosecute perpetrators.
"With regard to Gadhafi's death, we have regularly urged the government of Libya to continue to investigate the circumstances," she told reporters. "And it's very important to hold those responsible to account. This is part not only the judicial maturation of Libya, but also part of the ground that they need to plow for national reconciliation."
Nuland said the U.S. is engaged in an extensive dialogue with Libya on all aspects of its judicial system. This involves training lawyers, judges and civil society.
"We need to now support them as they take the next steps on all of these issues," she said.
Associated Press writer Esam Mohamed in Tripoli, Libya and Bradley Klapper contributed to this report from Washington.


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The "Got Your Six" (GY6) campaign is a show of force from the American pubic to ensure that we welcome home our returning veterans - an additional one million in the next five years - as leaders and civic assets who can be key contributing members to our communities. There are six pillars to the GY6 campaign: Jobs, Education, Health, Housing, Family, and Leadership.
The Sierra Club is proud to be a strategic partner to help assist the activation partners on five of the six pillars. We will work with our partners to help identify employment opportunities in the great outdoors and clean energy fields for veterans; support continued environmental education; improve social and mental health, as well as the reintegration of families through expanding outside recreation opportunities; and ultimately through transitioning military leadership skills to the outdoors to get all of America outside.
The Sierra Club has a long history with the military, highlighted by WW2 and 10th Mountain Veteran David Brower who as a Sierra Club member helped to train the 10th Mountain, and as a decorated Veteran (won the Bronze Star) of the 10th Mountain went on to become the Sierra Club's first executive director. We reinitiated our partnership with the military with the creation of the Military Family Outdoors program in 2006, now a part of Mission Outdoors.
We have strong qualitative evidence that time in the outdoors helps to strengthen families and mitigate the effects of post-traumatic stress. We help veterans utilitize their skills through leadership in the outdoors and through community service. Community service opportunities for veterans abound in the Sierra Club through programs like the Water Sentinels, Inner City Outings, Local Outings, and more.
Supporting military families and veterans is not a partisan issue. We can all do our part and at the Sierra Club we are proud of the work we have done and will continue to do to ensure our military and veteran communities and families can all get outside to experience the freedom of the land they defended.
Learn more about "Got Your Six" at their website.


text: The Extra Lesson (C) facilitates innate learning abilities. The faculty to learn is the harmonious physical body which has a strong foundation of sensory integration. This physical body is the vehicle out of which the individual is able to take hold of learning and develop as a healthy human being.The Extra Lesson was developed by Audrey McAllen in the UK. The first edition of her book The Extra Lesson was published in 1974 and is based on Rudolf Steiner's philosophy of the developing human being.


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In this Aug. 21, 2013 photo, Karim Corzo, a shoe designer using Guatemalan textiles, poses for a photo at a workspace in her factory in Guatemala City. Embroidered Mayan textiles known as huipiles are undergoing a revival in some of the country's finest boutiques as they become a haute couture fixture. Corzo saw an economic benefit to the fashion trend. "They allow us to give work to the women who weave them and sell them," Corzo said. (AP Photo/Luis Soto)
by Sonia Perez D.
Associated Press Writer
GUATEMALA CITY (AP) – With their brightly colored fabrics filled with animals and landscapes, Guatemala's indigenous had long used textiles to tell stories and share their visions of the universe. In modern times, however, those same fabrics made their wearers targets for discrimination, marking them as part of the country's poor and indigenous.
Now, embroidered Mayan textiles known as huipiles are undergoing a revival in some of the country's finest boutiques as they become a haute couture fixture. Young Guatemalan designers are using them for everything from evening gowns and purses to handmade shoes sold as far away as Dubai.
For many here, the widening use of huipiles fits a wider embrace of the country's indigenous roots, with musicians, designers and even politicians adopting Mayan languages and themes. That's also happening in other countries with strong indigenous traditions, such as Bolivia and Mexico, where such clothing and culture are overcoming long-held societal stigmas.
For Adela Qel, a 45-year-old Kaqchikel indigenous woman wearing a huipil in the rural region of Sacatepequez, that acceptance in the fashion world reflects her own pride in the bright clothing.
"It doesn't bother me that they use the typical clothing because if they like it, I can't be mad about this," Qel said. "I am proud of my dress."
The fabrics come in dazzling colors, interwoven in bands and geometric patterns, often worn as tunics or dresses. In Guatemala's design houses, that's translated into pumps, ties and purses that stand out from the usual sober colors displayed in high-end stores.
The Maria's Bags label has seen surprising success with its indigenous-based designs, with the label selling its purses in Bloomingdale's department stores around the world.
In this Aug. 21, 2013 photo, a tailor mannequin displays a Guatemalan textile blazer made by high-couture designer Eduardo Figueroa, in his studio in Guatemala City. (AP Photo/Luis Soto)
Eduardo Figueroa, a high-couture designer, said modernizing the Mayan designs helps non-indigenous people appreciate this ethnic fashion. Already, some of the new creations have been seen in the wardrobes of Guatemalan political figures and celebrities. And Guatemalans living in the United States and other countries have particularly embraced the designs, perhaps as a cure for their nostalgia for home.
Figueroa, for one, won international recognition for the bright orange gown with a spray of floral design at the shoulders he designed for Guatemala's contestant at Miss World 2012. The outfit was rated as one of the contest's best by fashion designer and Project Runway judge Nick Verreos.
"I am inspired by color and Guatemalan textiles are rich in color," Figueroa said. "There were people who would tell you that they thought that traditional textiles were just for cushions and tablecloths, but I tell them that they can be used in many ways."
Shoe designer Karim Corzo said the new trend also meant an economic boost for the communities who have long made the fabrics.
"They allow us to give work to the women who weave them and sell them," Corzo said.
Guatemalan rapper Tzutu Baktun Kan saw a larger cultural move toward his country's indigenous roots, harkening back to the first millennium when present-day Guatemala sat in the heart of the Mayan empire.
"What we are trying to do is strengthen the Mayan languages that little by little are not being spoken," said Kan, who performs in the indigenous language of Tzutujil. "We want to open more spaces that break the ties of racism."
Not everyone, however, embraces that heritage.
Eduardo Ortiz, a high-couture clothing designer, said he doesn't use traditional Guatemalan textiles because they aren't his style and because he thinks some Guatemalans won't accept them.
"Some people think they will look too indigenous with this type of clothing," the designer said.
Under Spanish colonial rule, indigenous Guatemalans were forced to use traditional outfits specific to the region they lived in so the authorities could better identify them. Over the years, the embroidery of those outfits became a unique means for self-expression, with the designs incorporating elements such as the Mayan calendar and images of conjurers who people believed could take animal form, said Alvaro Pop, a United Nations expert on indigenous cultures.
"The Mayans took all their world views and their oral traditions and expressed their thoughts and ideas on their outfits," Pop said.
In more recent decades, the weaving on such fabrics became more modern with more colors mixed into the designs.
"When you are outside of the country you think it's beautiful but by modernizing these traditional textiles we are getting Guatemalans (in the country) to wear them," Corzo said.
That doesn't mean the new fashion comes cheap. A pair of high-couture shoes runs from $50 to $150 while a gown can cost between $300 and $800, with the price, according to the designers, a result of the exclusive designs and quality of the handmade products.
Eventually, Pop said, some of that money should go back to the communities, which are among this impoverished country's poorest and most marginalized. One of their greatest remaining possessions, he said, is their millennia-old culture.
"Ethnic fashion is a trend around the world but we have to be very careful to not simply infringe on the copyright of the indigenous creators of the textiles," he said. "Each textile they make is absolutely unique, they don't make it twice and that intellectual property should be paid for too."


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Seeking Michigan: From Signage to Santa
My favorite holiday movie is National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation (1989). Clark Griswold, (Chevy Chase), our hero, has a plan for the traditional Griswold family Christmas that includes fifty thousand twinkling outdoor lights on the roof. When Clark drags his entire family out to see his masterpiece, the lights don't work. The frustrating, yet entertaining, effort to fix the problem resonates with me (This includes Clark on the roof checking each individual bulb.). My favorite part comes when Clark prevails, the family is impressed, and he thanks his father for teaching him about exterior illumination.
Wallace Bronner (1927-2008) knew that exterior illumination is essential for the holidays. We are all familiar with his enormous enterprise: Bronner's CHRISTmas Wonderland, located on 25 Christmas Lane in Frankenmuth. Initially, this behemoth of holiday cheer started as a signage business. During the early forties, Wally worked as a sign painter and a clerk at the Hubinger Grocery Store, which was owned by his maternal relatives. Part of his job included designing window displays. In 1945, as Frankenmuth celebrated its centennial year, Bronner Display and Sign Advertising was in demand for painting signs and decorating store windows and parade floats. That year Wallace Bronner met Irene Ruth Pretzer, the woman he would marry on June 23, 1951 at St. Peter Lutheran Church in Hemlock, Michigan.
Irene was instrumental in helping Wally land a monthly window display contract with the Jennison Hardware Company of Bay City (c. 1947) (Irene had attended Bay City Junior College and boarded at the home of G.W. Cooke, president of the hardware company.). Bronner's work for the hardware company resulted in a referral to the town of Clare, Michigan (1951). This first municipal holiday commission was to design decorative lamppost panels. After that job, Wally hired his friend Fred Bernthal to look for new clients in Michigan, Ohio, Indiana and Ontario.
Bronner also entered into contracts with General Plastics Corporation (Marion, Indiana) and Mold-Craft Corporation (Port Washington, Wisconsin). These companies provided street trims and ornaments, latex Santas, reindeers and nativity scenes. In 1952, Bronner staged two shows exhibiting outdoor Christmas decorations, one in the Frankenmuth Township Hall, the other at the St. Lorenz School gymnasium. Both were successful. However, both venues were temporary. Bronner decided to rent a more permanent building, a vacated one-room schoolhouse (formerly Frankenmuth School District Number 1). Thus, year round exhibit of Christmas decorations became possible! "At first the people of the community thought the idea to be rather unusual, but accepted it fully when Frankenmuth became known as the Christmas Town." (Bronner's 2005 Corporate History, page 35.)
"Thinking Big"
Herman Bronner (Wally's father) was a building contractor and stone mason. He convinced his son to "think big" by changing the plans for the first Bronner-owned building from two, L-shaped, rectangular buildings to one large, square building. The Bronner's store at 121 East Tuscola (a lot adjoining Aunt Hattie's grocery store) opened in 1954. It was divided into two sections, one space for the sign painting business, the other for Christmas decorations.
Wally was grateful for his dad's vision and business acumen. The municipal clientele grew to include shopping centers and commercial interiors. As buyers selected decorations for their stores and churches, their wives requested home decorations. From 1954 to 1963, Bronner exhibited at the Saginaw County Fair, which, at the time, boasted numbers of three hundred thousand people. By 1960, the company was officially incorporated, and home decorations were added to the product line. In 1964, the first billboard advertising Bronners appeared on I-75, ten miles south of Exit 136 (Frankenmuth). Many travelling up North are familiar with that sign. Subsequent ones (more than sixty located in seven states) continue to extol the importance of holiday cheer and illumination.
Source material
Picturesque Story of Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, as related by Wally Bronner. Published by Bronner's Christmas Wonderland, 2005.
The History of Bronner's Christmas Decorations by Doris A Paul. Published by the Frankenmuth Historical Museum, 1981.
Brad Redford, a native of Frankenmuth visited Bronner's last year and has a pretty funny video in his show Redford's Rundown. However, we're going to have to go with this awesome music video of Wally Bronner (Christmas Always) by Michigan rockers The Hard Lessons. A little tip: click that link and subscribe to their email list to download their entire new album Arms Forest AND stay tuned at the end of the video for the B-side of this song, O Holy Night!


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Love of learning hasn't faded for Cubs legend Banks
At library rededication at Chicago elementary school, education emphasized
CHICAGO -- Ernie Banks knows a lot about hitting balls out of the park, snaring hard liners and entertaining crowds at Wrigley Field. He also knows a great deal about education, his passion in life after baseball.
Mr. Cub spoke to a group of children at Cameron Elementary School in Chicago on Wednesday about the importance of education during the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the rededication of the school's library. The event was sponsored by Target, which, along with Major League Baseball and PEOPLE, is celebrating teachers who make an impact on the lives of their students and communities through the "Target Presents PEOPLE All-Star Teachers" campaign.
Through Tuesday, fans can nominate an outstanding teacher at AllStarTeachers.com to give nominees a chance to represent their favorite team. The winning teachers will be honored at the 2014 MLB All-Star Game on July 15 in Minneapolis on FOX.
"My life here is just learning from you all the things that you have learned in your life," Banks told the crowd. "I'm happy to be here, happy to see all of you. The library is fantastic. And there is so much knowledge in this library for all of us to learn and be a part of, and we should try to do that. I learned a lot of things from Jackie Robinson, from Satchel Paige, a lot of things playing in the Negro Leagues, and it really has helped me a lot."
Banks, along with Chicago Public Schools CEO Barbara Byrd-Bennett and representatives from Target, cut the ceremonial ribbon for the library. The library was given a technology facelift -- including new iPads for students -- and given more books, among other upgrades.
Banks went back to school following his retirement from baseball, attending Northwestern University and The University of Chicago, among other schools. His goal is to help the children at Cameron and schools across the country become well-educated in math, science and engineering. At Cameron, for example, he wants to start a Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) program.
"That's what I want to start -- to help everybody, all young people who are good in math," Banks said. "So I want learn about that and I want to get them trained to go to MIT to become nuclear physicists and help save this world."


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...it's especially evident in our new, burgeoning pharmaceutical market, our children:
Madeira Therapeutics, based in Leawood, Kan., is formulating a liquid statin for children that will be sold in either grape, cherry or bubblegum flavor, according to the company's chief executive, Peter R. Joiner.This need is further supported, of course, by powerful marketing data supplied by the monstrously profitable prescription services themselves: Medco Health Solutions, Express Scripts, and Verispan:
Madeira became interested in the drug to treat children with a genetic cholesterol condition, familial hypercholesterolemia, which strikes 1 in 500 children regardless of their diet. The recent American Academy of Pediatrics statement adds to the potential market, according to Mr. Joiner.
Express Scripts and Medco developed estimates of how many children might be taking such drugs by extrapolating their data — involving a total of more than four million children — across the broader population.And therefore, because the rates have climbed, it must be okay, right?
The companies use different assumptions to reach their estimates, but the data suggests that at least several hundred thousand children are on various obesity-related medications.
The greatest increase occurred in drugs for Type 2 diabetes, with Medco's data showing a 151 percent jump from 2001 to 2007.
Medco's data, released in May, showed that use of drugs to treat acid reflux problems in children, often aggravated by obesity, increased 137 percent over seven years. Its analysis also showed an 18 percent increase in drugs to treat high blood pressure and a 12 percent increase in cholesterol-lowering medications during the seven-year period.
Express Scripts found a 15 percent increase over three years in drugs to treat cholesterol and other fats in the blood, a category that is primarily statins.
"We were amazed at how quickly the rates of drugs used have climbed," said Dr. Donna R. Halloran, an assistant professor at St. Louis University who worked on the Express Scripts analysis, presented at a meeting of the American Public Health Association in November.
Verispan data recorded a 13 percent increase in high blood pressure prescriptions in the under 19 age group from 2005 to 2007. Its numbers show, however, a less than 1 percent increase during the period in cholesterol-lowering drugs in children.
The suspect nature of these culled data draw into question the message we want to feed (pun intended) our children and families, and pushes public health experts (and even our professional societies) to waddle toward the path of least resistance when it comes to caring for our children.
The issue of childhood obesity is a complicated one, fraught with many challenges. The influence of the fast-food industry, internet gaming industry, drops in funding to support school-based physical education programs, and the complicated socioeconomic challenges of fragmented families, have all coalesced to create the perfect storm of influences to promote weight gain in our children. These problems, it seems, have become insurmountable.
Better to just give 'em a pill.
Image reference.


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Fresh from SXSW, Brooklyn trio Little Daylight are set to join fellow bands Terraplane Sun and Flagship in what's being billed as the "Three of Clubs" tour, hitting the Sixth and I Historic Synagogue in DC on Tuesday, March 25.
I single out Little Daylight, soon to release their first full-length album, Hello Memory, because they represent a kind of music I always adore — great electronic dance music with cool female vocals, as showcased by their latest single, "Siren Call."
Nikki Taylor, Matt Lewkowicz and Eric Zeiler got their start remixing singles for the likes of Passion Pit and Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeroes but now they have broken out as a full-fledged dreampop band with some catchy tunes that somehow bear ambient atmospherics over strong rhythms. Check out their video for "Overdose" and see for yourself.
The Three of Clubs tour also includes Flagship, from Charlotte, NC, (some of us may have seen them open for The Wombats at the 9:30 Club) and Terraplane Sun, from Venice Beach, CA.
Three of Clubs Tour
Terraplane Sun, Flagship and Little Daylight
Sixth and I Historic Synagogue
Tuesday, March 25
Doors @7pm, show @8pm
All ages


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With recent news of Google adding support for telephone calls from GTalk, I thought it was time to finally setup voice and video plugin on my system. The good thing is that Google provides the Linux version of the browser plugin. The bad news are that the plugin is only packaged for Debian-based systems, while I am a Fedora Linux user. But thanks to a couple of Google searches, the solution is known and is quite simple in fact. Here is what I had to do.
- Download the browser plugin-in (.deb file, 6 MB).
- Extract the content of the google-talkplugin_current_i386.deb file, using ark, or file-roller, or, like me, using Midnight Commander.
- In the extracted files, you'll see data.tar.gz . Extract it to your system folders (/opt, /usr, /etc). In fact, you can skip /etc part that sets up a cron job to update the plugin daily. It relies on apt, which you probably won't have installed and configured on your Fedora system.
- Try running the plugin in command line, using: /opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin
- If you see the error like "/opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin: error while loading shared libraries: libssl.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory", fix it by creating a symbolic link: cd /usr/lib && ln -s libssl.so.1.0.0a libssl.so.0.9.8
- If you see the error like "/opt/google/talkplugin/GoogleTalkPlugin: error while loading shared libraries: libcrypto.so.0.9.8: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory", fix it by installing Adobe Reader: yum install AdobeReader_enu-9.3.3-1.i486 , and then creating the symbolic link: cd /usr/lib && ln -s /opt/Adobe/Reader9/Reader/intellinux/lib/libcrypto.so.0.9.8 . If you don't have adobe repo configured or want an alternative to having Adobe Reader on your system, examine the output of "yum provides libcrypto.so.0.9.8", which will tell you which other packages have the required library.
- Restart your browser.
- Check that the plugin is installed and enabled by looking at "about:plugins" or a similar page of your browser.
Now you should be able to use voice and video chat in GTalk. Here is a screenshot I made of a video chat after I did all of the above steps.
If your browser still complains about not having the plugin installed, or plugin crashes for some reason, just run it from the command line (step 4). Examine the output and act accordingly. Usually everything should just work, and pretty much the only scenario when it doesn't is when you don't have required libraries installed on your system, or you have them installed in a different path than the plugin expects them. Symbolic links should fix the path issue. Yum should help you with locating any missing library.


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Let's start by clarifying the difference between a Lens Extender and an extension tube. Both make lenses longer – hence the confusing similarity of the names. But Extenders, also known as teleconverters, have lens elements inside to increase the effective focal length of lenses, while extension tubes have no optical elements and are used to increase the effective magnification of a lens simply by moving the lens optics further away from the camera. Extenders are typically used for distant subjects and extension tubes for close subjects.
To understand how extension tubes work, consider how close-focusing works. With many lenses, as you focus closer, the length of the lens increases. Or to put it another way, the optics inside the lens move away from the camera as the subject moves nearer. Some lenses have internal focusing, meaning that their elements move back and forth within the barrel and the length of the lens does not change, but the principle is the same.
The closest focusing distance is reached when the lens is extended as far as it will go or the elements are moved to their furthest point. This focusing distance varies considerably from lens to lens – for example, the Canon EF-M 22mm f/2 STM lens enables you to focus on a subject just 15cm from the camera's sensor, while the EF 800mm f/5.6L IS USM has a closest focusing distance of 6 metres. But the magnification of the subject (actually a reduction) stays within a narrower range, from about 0.1x to 0.3x.
Why do lenses stop extending? Partly because it costs more to design and manufacture lenses with longer extensions, partly because it is difficult to design a lens that gives high-performance results over a wide range of focusing distances.


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WASHINGTON (REUTERS) - The White House on Friday stepped up efforts to slow the flow of illegal children into the country, expanding the government's ability to process and deport people and announcing new funding to boost security in crime-plagued Central American countries.
The Obama administration said it would boost the ranks of immigration judges, lawyers and asylum officers to quickly decide what happens to people apprehended at the border and to return them to their home countries.
"We are surging resources to increase our capacity to detain individuals and adults with children, and to handle immigration court hearings," Homeland Security Deputy Director Alejandro Mayorkas told reporters. "This will allow Immigration and Customs Enforcement - or ICE - to return unlawful migrants from Central America who are ordered removed to their home countries more quickly," he said.
Officials further announced US$9.6 million (S$12 million) in additional support to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras to help them receive and reintegrate people who are sent back.
In an effort to address the causes of flight from Central America, the administration said it would launch a US$40 million program to improve security in Guatemala and a US$25 million program to provide services to youth in El Salvador who are vulnerable to organised crime.
Washington has scrambled to address a flood of children arriving illegally at the border, causing President Barack Obama has called an urgent humanitarian crisis. The president took the issue up on Thursday with Mexican President Enrique Pena Nieto, while Vice President Joe Biden was in Guatemala on Friday to discuss the problem with Central American leaders.
"You're clearly not going to send a child back to a circumstance where there is no one there for them," Mr Biden said. "But we do intend, and everyone agreed, it is necessary to put them back in the hands of a parent in the country from which they came."
Ms Cecilia Munoz, the White House domestic policy director, said that some of Friday's measures were designed to help Central American countries stem the migration.
Efforts aim to "deal with the misinformation that is being deliberately planted by criminal organisations, by smuggling networks, about what people can expect when they come to the United States," she told reporters.
From October to June 15, 52,000 unaccompanied children arrived on the US border with Mexico, Mr Mayorkas said. DHS is looking for more facilities to house the minors, he said.
Republicans blame the influx of children on Mr Obama's 2012 decision to give temporary relief from deportation to some young people brought to the United States illegally by their parents. House of Representatives Speaker John Boehner urged Mr Obama on Friday to deploy the National Guard to handle the children and relieve the taxed Border Patrol.
The White House rejected that idea, saying there are already "significant enforcement resources" deployed along the border. Democratic Congressman Luis V. Gutiérrez further criticised the National Guard idea as "a naïve and aggressive knee-jerk reaction that is completely inappropriate in these circumstances."